Garage Sales!

Fredericktown had there annual garage sales this weekend! Mom and the two of us went all out on searching for treasures! Our adventure actually started Wednesday with the auction. The three of us went this time and we came home with a few great things. Sarah got a pair of cool French figurines to add to her collection. I got this very interesting glass battleship. Turns out that they were sold during WWII. They came with a paper bottom and were filled with candy pieces. Very different. It isn't everyday that you get a glass statue of a WWII battleship! We got some other things, a couple old dresser lamps, some really nice fake flowers, and Mom got a beautiful old glass cake stand that has swallows on it.

Thursday dawned bright and clear (for a change)! We were out of the house by 9:00am and and did several sales. We headed down to Mt. Vernon and did another sale before taking Dad out to lunch for pizza. We got really nice stuff. A gorgeous floor lamp from the '50s that is Colonial revival style, painted pumpkin orange. Really gorgeous. We are going to put it upstairs behind our love seat in the back room. We got a stack of wonderful cotton woven rugs, some kitchen utensils, a couple TY beanie babies, and a large stack of kids books! We also drove to the MT. Vernon book sale warehouse. What a dump! Everything was so dirty. Really, book sales are not what they used to be. But let's change the subject as it just makes me sad! :o( I did get some Judy Garland LPs, though. That was great, as I can never find her records. Mom got a stack of old kitchen booklets from the 1930s -50s. One really fun one about garnishes. Inspired me!

Friday we went to more town sales. Got some fun stuff. Sarah got a desk lamp that is yellow and matches the the floor lamp that we got. She put it on the sewing stand upstairs for felting. I love these style lamps! After lunch we had to head up to Mansfield for massage appointments and did a couple of rummage sales up there. We got some of the best stuff there. A set of old hard sider Samsonite suitcases. Navy blue. A large one and two matching smaller ones. They have tiny wheels on the bottom, and an attachable strap, so that when they don't need to be carried, you can pull them! We are so thrilled. Sarah and I are going to use the matching small ones when we go to FLA. Got a few more stuffed animals (like we need any more, right?), and some cool nick nacks. We got these old Christmas ornaments (plastic and felt, like the old elves and santas) that are Snow White and the Five Dwarves (missing Grumpy and Sneezy). They are some of the coolest things! I also got a cool tile to hang up in the kitchen.

Saturday we did the last of the town sales. One more rummage sale, that turned out to be really good. We got some glass serving bowls that will match our nice winter Silver Pine dishes and will work perfectly for Cuban meals. A couple of old British tins (I love British tins, they are so different from American style tins), some little figurines, a Barbra Streisand CD (for guess who?! ), a gorgeous old framed cardboard litho for the bathroom, and a bunch of other stuff.

Actually, we did really well this year. We didn't over buy. Bought stuff we really liked or needed. What was sad was the state of garage and rummage sales. Small and everywhere we went the stuff was filthy! It was amazing how many places were selling dirty things! Rummage sales that have been large every other year were really tiny this year. All in all, after we washed everything up, we had a swell time and it was loads of fun. We got some really nice things.

The Royal Wedding of William and Catherine

Yesterday was the Royal wedding. We watched the rebroadcast on the computer. We watched most of the ceremony before we had to leave to run errands. It was really cool. A beautiful service and we got to see Queen Elizabeth! She is beautiful and so classy. Prince Philip was perfect in his uniform.

Mom remembers getting up to watch Prince Charles and Diana's wedding. We have been really excited about this. Actually, Sarah and I wore all red, white and blue clothes today in honor of it!

The service was wonderful. Lovely organ, gorgeous cathedral, and the choir . . . wow! The online streaming was really poor, so it was very choppy. However, we enjoyed it so much that we preordered the DVD of the ceremony and a CD of all the music. It was really exciting to get to see part of it. Sarah and I have already ordered our Royal Wedding Postage Stamps!

"That which God has joined together, let no man put asunder."

Easter with Friends

We have had a very busy weekend! On Thursday, we woke up and the weather was so beautiful. Blue sky, no wind, no clouds, sunshine! The three of us decided that we wanted to go somewhere, so we drove up to Wooster and went to a bunch of thrift stores. Got some Winnie The Pooh books, a lot of note cards, some drinking glasses, and some other cool stuff. Got a General MacArthur plate that even has Corregidor along the bottom! We also went to Apple Creek to a fibre mill where Sarah was able to pick four bags full of different coloured wool roving for felting projects! That was so fun. The smell of wool when you went in was simply wonderful. I love wool. I love felting! Or rather watching Sarah felt! In the end we didn't get home until late.

It has rained since then, so we were all glad that we got to get out and about in the nice weather! Friday we had doctor's appointments and Saturday we spent cooking for yesterday. Yesterday, We went to Church in the morning. It was very nice. They sang a lot of traditional songs and we got to see a bunch of people. Very fun. Then we went to the Keultjes's house for lunch after Church. Ended up staying until half past nine! Time always flies with them. Hannah and Claire came up for the day, so it was a nice chance to see them sometime other than Christmas. We had a blast! They had a small scavenger hunt for their Easter baskets, so Sarah and I gave them some help. An acorn, a feather, a black rock, a Barbie doll, a bird's nest, a red flower, signatures from two neighbors, and two earthworms! We helped Claire find all the stuff except the earthworms! The three of us elected Hannah to do it. She went down to the compost pile and brought a shovel full of it to the front door for Mrs. Keultjes to inspect! It was really, really fun!

On Monday morning, Buddy and Kay called early in the morning and asked if we wanted to go with them to the Loft to get Buddy's violin fixed. So, we drove to Mount Vernon and all went in their car down to Columbus. We went to lunch afterwards and then stopped in at Best Buy to look for a set of speakers for their recording machine. However, all the speakers were junk! So tinny sounding and expensive! So, we went to their house and Kay and I tried all of the speakers that they had around the house. We ended up finding a stereo from his Mom that worked. We cleaned out the whole recording corner and sorted all the cords and cables!

Mom and Kay worked on family history for a while and Buddy and the two of us played around with his guitar and viola. He played all the new songs that he has written and recorded recently. That was a lot of fun. We also got to spend some time with Casey. We gave him a new doggie toy that looks like a shish kabob and he spent the entire evening carrying it around. He is so cute! We ended up staying until after nine and then they drove us back to our car. A super fun day. We haven't had a day like that with them since filming time.

So, our Easter "weekend" has been loaded with fun. We all really enjoyed it, but are now a little tired out. Hopefully this week the Spring cleaning will progress. Onto more fun and adventure . . .

"Christ the Lord is risen today . . . "

Double Yokers and Duck Eggs

Several months ago, the guy down the road stopped selling eggs, due to pilfering problems. We have always bought our eggs from him since a few years after we moved to this house. A very sad affair. He had the most gorgeous eggs that you have ever seen . . . AND the biggest! So now we are having to find a new place to buy eggs. Quite sad. Well, a few weeks ago when we were up in Mansfield, we stopped at a market and bought a half-dozen of the largest eggs you have ever seen! They had placed them on the top of an egg carton and the six eggs filled the space! Oh, Sarah and I were hoping for a double yoker, as we have never seen one for real. On Sunday night I was making eggs for Dad to eat for breakfast during the week, and what do you know?! I found a double yoker! Oh, we couldn't have been more excited. It was the largest of the six eggs and it had a lump in the middle. Joy, joy! I made them sunny side up for Dad's breakfast because I couldn't bring myself to scramble it!

At the bulk food store a couple weeks ago, we bought a dozen Duck eggs for Dad to try. They are big, white (with a slight blue tint), and very hard to crack! Dad really liked them. Supposedly they are stronger, but he didn't notice. We made eggs and rice for him. They are very hard to scramble as the yolks are hard to break. (In the picture at the left, the duck egg is the top one in the bowl!)

So, that is our egg-citing story for the month! (or should I say "honk honk"?!)

Snow In View . . . O! The Joy

O! The joy! Last night we got a dusting of snow. Enough to make everything almost white again! I am so happy. This morning I went out and filled all the bird feeders and it was just gorgeous. Actually, it is quite funny. Yesterday it was in the 50s and I was wearing short pants. A huge storm blew through though, even had tornadoes. We could hear the sirens from Fredericktown and Dad's work had to go into the shelters!

I am happy about the snow. We had oatmeal and hot tea for breakfast and I am wearing a new long sleeve shirt. Fun, fun, fun.

"For to the snow He says, 'Fall on the earth,'. . . " - Job 37:6

New Memory

Oh, boy! Am I really happy today! The RAM in my computer has been dying all year and we finally ordered some new sticks which arrived a few days ago. Yesterday, I cleaned out my desk and pulled the CPU up onto the dining room table. While waiting for Mom to help me I decided that I could at least clean the dust out of it, so I took the case off and vacuumed it and cleaned the fans. Then I decided that I could at least remove the old memory. Since nothing bad happened when I did that I decided to go ahead and put the new ones in myself. A little nervous, but it went smoothly and I put it back together and plugged it in and, guess what? It worked! I couldn't be happier! Also, the computer is so fast now! I can open multiple screens and hopefully it won't crash any more.

"Assault In Norway" and Chicago and the Atom

This past month I read one of the BEST books ever! "Assault In Norway: Sabotaging the Nazi Nuclear Program" by Thomas Gallagher. Every night as I am sitting on the sofa I see this book on the shelf next to us. It really sticks out. It is one of those that I am always saying "Oh, I need to read that one day", and then never do. Well, I have been watching "Edge of Darkness" (a 1943 film starring Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan about Nazi occupied Norway. A must see film, by the way!) and really wanted a book about WWII Norway. One glance at the shelf and there was "Assault in Norway", just waiting. I decided I would read it and, Boy! What a book! No piece of fiction could ever be half as exciting as this. It 's the story about a group of Norwegian commandos who have to blow up the Nazi's heavy water factory in the mountains of Norway. I can't say enough about it. The author wrote fiction as well as nonfiction and it really makes for enjoyable reading. Every character comes off the page for you as you are reading and you can't put it down! At least, I didn't. I finished it in three evenings. Who cares about watching movies? This was much more exciting! (I know I am using a lot of exclamation points, but this book is worth it!) It really is an amazing story and you can really see God's hand in the entire mission which shouldn't have turned out like it did! But, I won't spill it, you just have to read the story.

When I had finished it, I just couldn't get my mind off of it. Very gripping really! So, I am sitting at my computer a few days later (probably still thinking about it) and Mom and Sarah are looking up old sterling silver charms on eBay. All of a sudden I hear Mom saying what an odd charm she found with atoms flying around a Chicago university building. My ears pricked up. It turns out that there was some sort of Chicago bracelet that had charms commemorating different historical things in Illinois and one of them is commemorating the first self-reacting atomic pile that was built on a squash court in the University of Chicago right at the same time as the commandos were in Norway. There was an entire section in my book about this pile and the scientist who built it. Boy, was I thrilled! So, we tried bidding on it, but lost. So, another came up and another and we finally won one last Thursday. It arrived in the mail today and I couldn't be happier about it! Imagine finding a charm to match my new favorite book all about heavy water and atomic research and Norwegian commandos! Not exactly the most popular subject to commemorate with a sterling silver charm.

Ann Blyth and Richard Bonynge Autographs

We cam home yesterday from the Chiropractor's and waiting for us in the mail box were two fan mail responses! We haven't gotten any back lately and Sarah and I were just talking about that saying that we should really write some more letters. Now, to find two waiting for us! Thrilling! The first we knew was one of our US actresses who we had mailed last month (because it came in our SASE envelope. Brilliant deduction isn't that?) but the second was a mystery. Actually, Sarah got the mail while I was getting stuff out of the car and she shows me this little white envelope and says it's from France. (Actually, it was from Switzerland) I couldn't think of anybody who I had sent to in France. The mystery fan mail . . .

The large envelope turned out to be from Ann Blyth. She sent our photos back beautifully signed and personalized. We couldn't be happier. She is in one of my favorite stories, "The World in His Arms". She is the perfect Russian princess. If you haven't seen the film yet, it is worth getting! The book is a little harder to find. Actually quite rare. I did finally get a copy last month. Really fun! Sarah and I were really excited to get her autograph as she doesn't always sign your photos, so this was a fun surprise. She is a great actress and has a very pretty singing voice.

The small white envelope turned out to be from Opera Conductor Richard Bonynge (Dame Joan Sutherland's husband). I had found an address for his agent in New York and figured it couldn't hurt to write a letter. He sent back a beautiful 4x6 photo that was signed and personalized. So very, very exciting! I had written to Joan Sutherland several years ago and she had sent back a beautiful photo. So now I have both of them! I am going to put both photos together in my scrapbook. I am so thrilled!

A Letter from Amanda Root

I am SO happy. Last week, I went to the mail box and came back in with a pile of packages and a small stack of mail. As Mom and Sarah are already working on my Christmas present, I wasn't allowed to open the packages, but the mail! That is another story. Usually it is junk mail which I have the fun of ripping open and then throwing in the filing receptacle (commonly called the "garbage can"). Well, this time there was a nice little white envelope that had a British stamp on it and no return address. This means a fan mail response! We opened it and it was a reply from actress Amanda Root, who played Anne in the 1995 Persuasion! Oh Boy! I was thrilled. No, I was more than thrilled . . . I was ecstatic! She was the one I had been hoping would answer, of all the people that we wrote to.

I had had to really search for her address and we had written to her in June. I wasn't even sure that she responded. We couldn't have been happier with her response. She sent us each a lovely signed photo and she wrote a note in answer to our letters which was just wonderful. She really is a wonderful actress. Although Pride and Prejudice is my favorite Jane Austen story and film, Amanda Root's Anne is my favorite film heroine. She really captures the character and the emotion of the part. The scene at the Italian concert never fails to send me sniffling in the corner of the sofa and the end where she reads the letter is so wonderful. You just have to see it!

So, right now I am working on the scrapbook page for her. She is right next to Ciaran Hinds (who played Wentworth) and they will have a spread with a bunch of Persuasion photos. Ohhhh, I couldn't be happier. God knew the perfect way to make my beginning of the year happy!

"Shout joyfully to God, all the earth . . . " - Psalm 66:1

Christmas, New Year, Auction, Lord of the Rings, Poirot, and Scrapbooks!

Our Christmas / New Year's events are all over! Now comes the time that we call "After Christmas". At least, during the year that is what we always call it. You know, "After Christmas I am going to do . . .". We had a very fun December. Sold a lot of stuff on eBay earlier in the month. This year, on New Year's Eve, we all went to the Auction house for their big auction of the year. They didn't have lots of box lots or anything. A lot of guns, a lot of glassware. But there was fun stuff to watch. It started at 10:00 in the morning and we left at 5:30 before they were quite done. They had some really nice furniture. Sarah got a sheet music cabinet that is really nice.

New Year's Day dawned grey and rainy, but warm. 57 degrees actually. Heat wave! Perfect day for our traditional movie marathon. "Trilogy Tuesday" is what we call it, no matter what the day is. We all sit and watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy all the way through. This year we started earlier than last year (We didn't even get to watch the last disc last year.). As always, the movies were wonderful. My favorite scene is the Flight to the Ford in Fellowship, however, the one that Sarah and really wait for is "Scene 56" in The Return of the King. Which is were Eomer finds Eowyn on the battlefield and she is in the Houses of Healing. We waited so long for it to come out on the extended DVD. We actually finished before 1:00am! It was very fun.



The next day, Sunday, we went to church at Providence, then we stopped and picked up a set of Scott's Stamp Catalogues from Steve. Goody, goody. That was a Chritsmas present for the family. They are 2009 and in colour! Then we went to Panera for lunch. That is always fun. When we got home, it was upstairs for me to start wrapping presents! As I had not wrapped any yet, I had a stack. Sarah needed up in the back room with me to put the finishing touches on Mom's present, so I wrapped all the presents and then put the ribbon on while she was with me. Actually, she even helped!

It was so nice, relaxed, no rush. (I have a feeling that that is "On account of, because"). Sarah and I had been working on a present since March. Mom had been wanting a felted doll since Sarah made the first ones, so we decided on a little Poirot. We finally found a box at a thrift store that was perfect! It opened the wrong direction, so I cut the velvet lining and the styrofoam insert out and re-glued them in the other direction. As well as re-padding under the velvet so that the doll would fit correctly. Then I got a gel pen and drew the Poirot logo on the top. It really looked swell! Sarah did a fantastic job on the doll and we even got a real sterling silver chain to make his watch chain! The lapel pin is a little company tag off of a chain that I had to cut up for parts. Sarah and I had sent for an autograph from David Suchet back in May and he had been kind enough to reply. However, that was before we had the box and the photos that we had sent were way too big! So, we sent a new photo the size of the box, hoping that it would get here in time. If it didn't, we decided to print a plain photo, but the effect wouldn't be the same. On December 28th, a plain number 10 envelope arrived, and Sarah recognized it right away! We couldn't have been happier that day. It was perfect! He did such a nice job signing in the space we left. Really, really nice. Mom was totally surprised and thrilled! God really blessed us in the fact that everything we needed fell together at just the right moment. The box, the lapel pin, the autograph!

Sarah got her Secondhand Lions pull toys that I had started last December. I had really dreaded having to paint the giraffe, as there is not cartoon of the giraffe. Dad just drew it in the style of the others. Well, once I really got started he looked so nice that he quickly became my favorite and I was sorry when I was finished. He, however, is too tall to be a pull toy, so we are going to make him into a table lamp. They turned out really cute. Couldn't be happier with them. Dad's cut out jobs are so nice.



I will do a post about my scrapbooks later! Too much for this one. On an ending note, we went up to Mansfield on Monday and took a bunch of metal things to a coin store (they buy precious metals. Like recycling!). Single earrings, broken chains, Dad's old gold crown, etc. Well, Dad and I dropped Mom and Sarah off and we ran a few errands. When we got back, they had finished looking and were adding it all up. We all expected about twenty dollars. Sarah and I started looking at some of the coins, and when we saw them start ringing up on the cash register, we headed over to see the final amount. She was counting out the money on the counter and we couldn't have been more shocked when it turned out to be $138! You could have knocked us both over. Not bad for a little pile of junk lying around the house. So, our year went out with a bang! Although, I am Praying that God gives us a slightly less eventful year this year!

"Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen"